The Avengers – 4K Ultra HD review

The Avengers – the first in what will be a four-movie series – saw Joss Whedon assemble several of Marvel’s finest to fight the good fight for planet Earth. Now it’s made its way to 4K Ultra HD – is it a smash, or a crash?

The story: Thor’s adopted bro Loki is being a nuisance again, teaming up with alien bullies the Chitauri in order to nab a power source known as ‘the tesseract’ – oh, and to take over Earth. They don’t count on Nick Fury and the “Avengers Initiative” though, which assembles the likes of Black Widow, Hulk, Captain America, Thor and Iron Man in order to fight for Earth’s right to party – and eat shawarma.

“Superheroes? In New York? Give me a break!”

The 4K disc: The final mastered format of The Avengers was 2K, so not surprisingly that’s what we get here, in an upscaled presentation. As anybody who’s been into 4K Ultra HD for a while will know, some 2K presentations look a bit meh, while others shine. Be thankful then, for this one is in the latter camp – woo! Detail sometimes belies the lower resolution, while the addition of HDR adds even more shine – and there’s a lot of shiny going on in this flick.

Great news – the audio has been remixed from it’s original cinematic 7.1 into Dolby Atmos. Like other Disney Atmos mixes so far it needs a little more volume cranking than others, but those who do so should be satisfied with the resulting noise. It can be a smidge uneven at times when it comes to subwoofer action, but ultimately most things that you’d expect to go “WHUMP!” go “WHUMP!”, while the soundtrack blares pleasingly and the often very amusing dialogue is clear. Meanwhile, those who revel in sonic bits and pieces flying about via their dedicated Atmos speakers are unlikely to be disappointed.

There are no extras at all on the 4K disc, you’ll need to pop in the accompanying Blu-ray for Joss Whedon’s commentary and a collection of featurettes, gags, a Soundgarden music video and deleted scenes.